A belated post on The Egoist for March! I thought I'd written one, but when working on April I noticed that I hadn't.
The big news here is that Tarr is beginning. Wyndham Lewis' novel opens with a few forerunners here--Ezra Pound's "Meditatio" excoriating the stupidity of the literary public for not liking Lewis and Joyce is one of these. The others are short stories by Lewis himself, "The French Poodle" and "A Young Soldier." Both are war stories, as is Tarr, at least in that it appeared in The Egoist during the war and will certainly resonate with it. They are themselves a matched pair: "The French Poodle" is about a young soldier attempting to sort through his trauma, and mostly failing. "A Young Soldier" is much shorter, a sketch more than a plotted story, about seeing a soldier who looked like he was born to kill.
Quick Notes:
Harriet Shaw Weaver continues to write the editorials, though Marsden is still on the paper, apparently.
Richard Aldington, Amy Lowell, and H.D. all contribute poems, as does Alice Groff. Leigh Henry writes on Ravel, Huntly Carter on American photography and French cubism.
Showing posts with label Huntly Carter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Huntly Carter. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2016
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
The Egoist, October 1915
The Egoist is replete with interesting material, as usual. I'm currently working on a paper on Dora Marsden, and I really should be spending all my time on it... but here goes.
Speaking of Marsden, she continues her anti-government reading of contemporary politics. The upshot of the month's "Views and Comments" is that the media is misrepresenting the people--that the controversy over conscription is unnecessary because the people support the war, and are willing to do what they need to do to win it.
M. Montagu-Nathan continues a series on problems with the translation of Russian literature into English. He wants more Gogol.
Edward Storer contributes many translations of Sappho, giving his own take on the sort of Greek lyric poets that Aldington has been publishing lately. He cited the Wharton edition as his source, and translated both whole poems and fragments, but corrects Wharton's more prudish reading of the poems with this: "That her poems were chiefly love-poems, and love-poems written to women, is clear even from the mutilated fragments which remain. Any other explanation destroys at once their art and their reality. Yet sedulous hypocrites are to be found to-day who will wilfully mistranslate and misconstrue in order to envelope the manners of antiquity in a retrospective and most absurd respectability." Cool. So are the poems. I have read many translations of Sappho, but in these, the aphoristic epigrams stand out:
The indefatigable Huntly Carter reviews A.J. Eddy's book, "Cubists and Post-Impressionism," an early critical work on those movements. Carter, having been on the scene since Manet and the Post-Impressionists in winter 1910, weighs in quickly and decisively. He accuses Eddy of jumbling up which artist belongs in which school ("Picasso is not a Cubist, but an essentialist." [!!!]) Carter does point out that writing about avant-garde art should be investigated with caution, especially when "painted theories of a school do not agree with the written ones." Intriguingly for me, Carter boils Eddy's theory down to a paraphrase of imagist doctrine (without citing imagism): "the painter is seeking to make an abstraction of the individualising features of a movement experienced by him in a moment of time. In this trifle resides the only possible theory and practice of art." Here Carter is condensing Eddy's reading of Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," and this is the first time I've seen Duchamp referenced. Carter has nice things to say about Kandinsky.
Someone signing as "E. H. W." translates Peter Altenberg's story "Une Femme est un Etat de Notre Ame." It's very interesting, a portrait of the emptiness of a young woman's bourgeois life, written in an experimental fashion. It's ambiguous to me on a first reading whether Altenberg is using the relationship with the young man to redeem and transform this life, or whether the relationship and its poetry is also ironized as empty. I lean to the latter. I wonder who "E. H. W." is.
John Gould Fletcher continues Ghosts of an Old House, his southern Gothic serial poem. I'm not into it, but he prophesies my (and your!) reading his poem after his death in this one:
Perhaps the perfect answer to this comes on the same page, facing: Marianne Moore's "Diligence is to Magic as Progress is to Flight," a poem in part about how a poem can escape becoming ephemeral. The other Moore poem is "To a Steam Roller," and both are amazing, but here I'll post just "Diligence" because of my (contrived) attempt to make it a response to Fletcher's anxiety:
I should wrap up this post, and I'll do so with Richard Aldington: he writes about Laurent Tailhade, praising him for his obscene satire. What does this suggest? Yes! Aldington's own attempt at poetic satire follows it. To continue the theme established by Fletcher and Moore: Aldington's satire ends with another accurate prophesy:
And here he is, by Raoul Kristian, who I can't locate online, and that's all for now:
Speaking of Marsden, she continues her anti-government reading of contemporary politics. The upshot of the month's "Views and Comments" is that the media is misrepresenting the people--that the controversy over conscription is unnecessary because the people support the war, and are willing to do what they need to do to win it.
M. Montagu-Nathan continues a series on problems with the translation of Russian literature into English. He wants more Gogol.
Edward Storer contributes many translations of Sappho, giving his own take on the sort of Greek lyric poets that Aldington has been publishing lately. He cited the Wharton edition as his source, and translated both whole poems and fragments, but corrects Wharton's more prudish reading of the poems with this: "That her poems were chiefly love-poems, and love-poems written to women, is clear even from the mutilated fragments which remain. Any other explanation destroys at once their art and their reality. Yet sedulous hypocrites are to be found to-day who will wilfully mistranslate and misconstrue in order to envelope the manners of antiquity in a retrospective and most absurd respectability." Cool. So are the poems. I have read many translations of Sappho, but in these, the aphoristic epigrams stand out:
The indefatigable Huntly Carter reviews A.J. Eddy's book, "Cubists and Post-Impressionism," an early critical work on those movements. Carter, having been on the scene since Manet and the Post-Impressionists in winter 1910, weighs in quickly and decisively. He accuses Eddy of jumbling up which artist belongs in which school ("Picasso is not a Cubist, but an essentialist." [!!!]) Carter does point out that writing about avant-garde art should be investigated with caution, especially when "painted theories of a school do not agree with the written ones." Intriguingly for me, Carter boils Eddy's theory down to a paraphrase of imagist doctrine (without citing imagism): "the painter is seeking to make an abstraction of the individualising features of a movement experienced by him in a moment of time. In this trifle resides the only possible theory and practice of art." Here Carter is condensing Eddy's reading of Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," and this is the first time I've seen Duchamp referenced. Carter has nice things to say about Kandinsky.
Someone signing as "E. H. W." translates Peter Altenberg's story "Une Femme est un Etat de Notre Ame." It's very interesting, a portrait of the emptiness of a young woman's bourgeois life, written in an experimental fashion. It's ambiguous to me on a first reading whether Altenberg is using the relationship with the young man to redeem and transform this life, or whether the relationship and its poetry is also ironized as empty. I lean to the latter. I wonder who "E. H. W." is.
John Gould Fletcher continues Ghosts of an Old House, his southern Gothic serial poem. I'm not into it, but he prophesies my (and your!) reading his poem after his death in this one:
I should wrap up this post, and I'll do so with Richard Aldington: he writes about Laurent Tailhade, praising him for his obscene satire. What does this suggest? Yes! Aldington's own attempt at poetic satire follows it. To continue the theme established by Fletcher and Moore: Aldington's satire ends with another accurate prophesy:
And here he is, by Raoul Kristian, who I can't locate online, and that's all for now:
Monday, June 29, 2015
The Egoist, June 1915
I've mentioned my summer fellowship on here before: I'm working on it a lot, and it's sucking up some of my blogging time. So a short post on The Egoist:
Marsden opens the issue with these lines, which make one think that one isn't going to like what else she's going to say: "Anglo-Saxon intelligence must arrive at an accurate apprehension of the nature of cultures if Anglo-Saxon supremacy is not to be finally and definitely relinquished." This sounds pretty bad taken with the other five sixths of the twentieth century to come. Her overall point is that England has allowed itself to be fooled into believing that morality has a bearing on international affairs, while morality is really just a means to keep the lower classes oppressed. This international morality leads in turn to the rise of Germany. Oddly, this argument is also one for socialism, and the suppression of individuality to the state for the duration of the war. At this point, Marsden seems a shadow of her former self: still arch, still provocative, but I have a feeling that her philosophy can't handle the war.
May Sinclair, famous for inventing the term "stream of consciousness" in The Egoist in 1918, contributes a passionate refutation to Harold Monro's reading of H.D. in the May issue of The Egoist. I love this passage on H.D.'s "Hermes of the Ways":
"If you are sworn to admire nothing but Swinburne, or Rossetti, or Mrs. Browning or Robert Browning and their imitators for ever and ever, you may reject the " Hermes " because there is no " passion " in it.
But why, in Heaven's name, should there be passion in it ? Haven't we had enough of passion and of the sentiment that passed for passion all through the nineteenth century ? We can't hope to escape the inevitable reaction. And isn't it almost time to remind us that there is a beauty of restraint and stillness and flawless clarity?"
My own reading of the poem finds plenty of passion in it, but Sinclair's point is to draw a contrast between it and "sentiment that passed for passion." We agree, though, that "to me, H.D. is the most significant of the Imagists" (88).
Awesome, awesome stuff.
Quick Notes:
This issue contains a handful of poems, one by Aldington, one by Frances Gregg, one by Helen Hoyt, and one by Anna Wickham. Gregg's is a cool Gothic one about seeing (and maybe more) a ghost at sea. Helen Hoyt's is intense: "The Bullet Speaks to the Poet," a poem written from the perspective of, well, a bullet--but a bullet who resembles a poet in its effects.
Joyces Portrait continues, and seems very much at home here in The Egoist, as usual. It is dazzling.
Aldington reviews a periodical released by Edward Storer, one of the original pre-Poundian imagists, Loose Leaves. It is two pages long! Sounds lovely.
Allen Upward sends a poem to the correspondence pages! I love this. It is his own version of the history of Imagism in Upwardian verse. Some of it is silly, but the upshot is that he claims independence from the movement and that his inspiration was Chinese poetry, not Storer, Flint, and company.
Lastly, the final set of letters: one from Huntly (whose first name I fear I've misspelled for the entire duration of this project) Carter, and a response from Aldington. Carter responds to the Imagists in his usual vitalist Romantic fashion, saying that they see poetry as "an Art" instead of "as Art," and are more interested in form than expression. Aldington's response is materialist, in its way: people need training to become better at art, and studying forms is the equivalent of an athlete's training in poetry. Nice counterpoints that really capture an important contrast in how to read poetry.
Actually lastly: there's a lovely advertisement at the end, a place I'd like to visit:
That's all for now.
Marsden opens the issue with these lines, which make one think that one isn't going to like what else she's going to say: "Anglo-Saxon intelligence must arrive at an accurate apprehension of the nature of cultures if Anglo-Saxon supremacy is not to be finally and definitely relinquished." This sounds pretty bad taken with the other five sixths of the twentieth century to come. Her overall point is that England has allowed itself to be fooled into believing that morality has a bearing on international affairs, while morality is really just a means to keep the lower classes oppressed. This international morality leads in turn to the rise of Germany. Oddly, this argument is also one for socialism, and the suppression of individuality to the state for the duration of the war. At this point, Marsden seems a shadow of her former self: still arch, still provocative, but I have a feeling that her philosophy can't handle the war.
May Sinclair, famous for inventing the term "stream of consciousness" in The Egoist in 1918, contributes a passionate refutation to Harold Monro's reading of H.D. in the May issue of The Egoist. I love this passage on H.D.'s "Hermes of the Ways":
"If you are sworn to admire nothing but Swinburne, or Rossetti, or Mrs. Browning or Robert Browning and their imitators for ever and ever, you may reject the " Hermes " because there is no " passion " in it.
But why, in Heaven's name, should there be passion in it ? Haven't we had enough of passion and of the sentiment that passed for passion all through the nineteenth century ? We can't hope to escape the inevitable reaction. And isn't it almost time to remind us that there is a beauty of restraint and stillness and flawless clarity?"
My own reading of the poem finds plenty of passion in it, but Sinclair's point is to draw a contrast between it and "sentiment that passed for passion." We agree, though, that "to me, H.D. is the most significant of the Imagists" (88).
Awesome, awesome stuff.
Quick Notes:
This issue contains a handful of poems, one by Aldington, one by Frances Gregg, one by Helen Hoyt, and one by Anna Wickham. Gregg's is a cool Gothic one about seeing (and maybe more) a ghost at sea. Helen Hoyt's is intense: "The Bullet Speaks to the Poet," a poem written from the perspective of, well, a bullet--but a bullet who resembles a poet in its effects.
Joyces Portrait continues, and seems very much at home here in The Egoist, as usual. It is dazzling.
Aldington reviews a periodical released by Edward Storer, one of the original pre-Poundian imagists, Loose Leaves. It is two pages long! Sounds lovely.
Allen Upward sends a poem to the correspondence pages! I love this. It is his own version of the history of Imagism in Upwardian verse. Some of it is silly, but the upshot is that he claims independence from the movement and that his inspiration was Chinese poetry, not Storer, Flint, and company.
Lastly, the final set of letters: one from Huntly (whose first name I fear I've misspelled for the entire duration of this project) Carter, and a response from Aldington. Carter responds to the Imagists in his usual vitalist Romantic fashion, saying that they see poetry as "an Art" instead of "as Art," and are more interested in form than expression. Aldington's response is materialist, in its way: people need training to become better at art, and studying forms is the equivalent of an athlete's training in poetry. Nice counterpoints that really capture an important contrast in how to read poetry.
Actually lastly: there's a lovely advertisement at the end, a place I'd like to visit:
That's all for now.
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